


how this grace thing works

by evewithanapple



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, PTSD, Period-Typical Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-07-30 12:06:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20096971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/pseuds/evewithanapple
Summary: “I’ll go with you. Travel, I mean.”The other woman laughs. Goodnight is startled by the sound – it’s somehow higher and clearer than she expected. “And what benefit would I find in that?”“Security,” Goodnight says bluntly. “Folk’ll listen to me – respect me – quicker than they will you. Me being white and – and looking like a man and all.” She adds that last as an impulse. There are many who would take the revelation of her gender as a weapon to turn on her; this woman, she thinks, is not one of them.





	how this grace thing works

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).

> Thanks to salazarastark for the beta, and the Discord hippos for connecting us to begin with!

She’s the best shot in the family, there’s no sense denying that. No way anyone _could_ deny it, either – not when both of her brothers are hopeless with a rifle, and her mama afraid to ever lay hands on one, even when there’s a panther scuffling around their door. Not when her daddy died of yellow fever when she hadn’t yet finished cutting her teeth, leaving them all high and dry and penniless, and she was the first to pick up the slack he left. It’s up to her to hunt, to kill, to keep them all safe. Her brothers take on odd jobs, never with much success, and her mama will sew for a handful of coin. But, for the most part, they live off the bounty she can bring in with her rifle – rabbits, mostly, and as she grows older, the occasional deer. None of them ever eat their fill, but they don’t starve.

She’s seventeen years old when the war breaks out, and Tennessee declares itself for the Confederacy. By then, there’s precious little of her family left: Mama had followed Daddy into the grave three years prior, one brother had lit out for Texas to rustle cattle, and the other had fallen out of a tree and broke his neck. It’s just her left in their little cabin, still shooting rabbits to get by and bolting the door against the outside world. She knows full and well that what little land she has can be taken from her at any moment – her daddy owned the place, but what are deeds and contracts when there’s only an underfed girl to protect it against any number of men who want it for themselves? And that’s just Tennessee men: she’s heard the whispers, knows that the Union army will come marching through, can easily guess what will happen if they come across the cabin and her alone in it. So, like she did when she first held a rifle in her hands, she makes a decision. She lops her hair off with a pair of rusty shears, patches up a pair of her brother’s old trousers so’s she can look presentable in them, loads up a knapsack, and leaves the cabin behind. The Union army can have it, and welcome. There’s nothing of value left there.

She loses herself easily in the flood of men at the recruitment offices, and the man who adds her name to the list hardly gives her a second glance. Her name, as she gives it to the Army, is Goodnight: it had been her granddaddy’s name, and while he died long before she first opened her eyes, she still feels more of a tie to him than she does with the rest of her kin. He had, according to her mama, been a prize sharpshooter, too. Goodnight Robicheaux. A few of the other enlisted men snicker at the silliness of it, but she ignores them. She didn’t come here to find friendship.

It wasn’t her intention, anyway; but she finds it nonetheless. There are several others in her infantry who find their way to sit beside her around the campfire, and she can’t find it in her heart to shoo them away. One of them, Randall by name, produces a harmonica that she blows on while the others sing “The Bonnie Blue Flag” and “I Wish I Was In Dixie.” When she’s not playing, she nods and hums along without much conviction. Some of her compatriots are here out of a sense of duty, the desire to see the Union driven back and the Confederacy brought to power and glory. She isn’t one of them. She finds that she can sing along with “Lorena” with somewhat more enthusiasm.

It doesn’t take long at all for her commanding officers to notice her proficiency with the rifle, and from then on, there’s no escaping her position as their prize sharpshooter. She brings five men down from a distance at Shiloh, little lights winking out as she pulls the trigger with trembling fingers. They start calling her “Angel of Death” after Sharpsburg, when she kills eight more. After that, she loses count; the men around her keep a careful tally, the better to embellish her rapidly growing legend, but she wants none of it. From time to time, she thinks of the cabin she left behind in Cumberland Gap, how she might have been better off battening down the doors and shutters and waiting for the Union Army to burn her out. It would have been a painful death, but at least it would have gone quicker than this slow whittling of her soul.

They’re all cut loose after the surrender at Appomattox, and she wanders away blind, with no particular destination in mind. She keeps the rifle – she’s got the presence of mind, at least, to know that she needs it to eat – and her new name, since she sees no use in going back to skirts now. She’s effectively ruined for polite society anyhow, so she may as well go along as Goodnight and take what protection the name offers. Her honours and medals, she drops unceremoniously in the dirt as she walks away. From there, she makes her way through what was once the Confederate States, drinking at every stop, waiting for death to turn its gaze on her.

Instead, she finds Biyu.

* * *

There’s ten children in the family all in all – Biyu and her three sisters, plus an assortment of cousins – which means that none of them come in for any particular special attention. The laundry is always busy, and her uncle has a restaurant next door that similarly needs all hands busy in the kitchen, so none of them want for things to do. She shares a room with the other girls, occasionally kicking one of her sisters when she snores too loudly, and spends her days in the laundry. Her hair straggles against her neck, damp with sweat and steam, so she keeps it pinned carefully in place with a silver pin – a gift from her aunt. There are enough Chinese in San Francisco that they can easily move among their own people and not concern themselves with learning English, but Biyu isn’t content with that. Her mother and uncle, she knows, have to be able to make themselves understood to their white customers; if she ever wants a share in the business, to be more than the second-rate help, she needs to follow in their footsteps. On the rare occasions when she’s not being put to work, she wanders the streets, ears pricked carefully for conversations in English that she repeats in a whisper until she knows she’s got the words right. The first time she steps forward and takes an order from one of the customers in (slightly clumsy, she will admit) English, her mother casts her with an appraising look.

“You learn quickly,” she says. Biyu only shrugs, and her mother smiles. “More work out front for you, then.”

She likes to play with her hairpin when she’s not wearing it, twirling and flipping it between her hands. She doesn’t do it where the adults might see – they’d be furious if they caught her being careless with such a valuable gift – so she only does it when she’s walking the streets, her hair neatly braided rather than pinned. Some men whistle at her when she walks by; she ignores them. Whether she’s bound for a future in the laundry or the restaurant, she knows she’s meant for more than the likes of ‘Frisco’s drunks.

She pauses once, out front of a saloon. There’s a man seated on a bench in front of the building, and for a moment, she thinks he’s playing with the same sort of hairpin she has. But it’s too big to be a pin, and it has a smooth leather handle. A knife, then. She watches, transfixed, as he spins it through the air, catching light with the bright edge of the blade. The hairpin is fun to play with, but this – this is something else entirely. There’s weight to that knife, the ability to end a life with a whim. But he’s not fighting with it; he’s playing. What power, she thinks, to hold life and death in your hands and treat it as a toy.

She’s too transfixed to be careful, and he catches her watching. He sets the knife down on his knee and glares at her. “What d’you want?”

She points. “That,” she says. “Your – “ She doesn’t know the English for _dagger_, so she has to settle. “Knife. I want that.”

He chuckles. “Not for sale, sweetheart.”

Under other circumstances, she might bristle at the endearment. But she’s on a mission now. “Not _your_ knife. I want _a_ knife. I want to do tricks, like you can. Like you did.”

“Tricks?” He still looks amused, but there’s a hardness to his gaze. “No tricks, little girl. Knives like these aren’t for children. You’d slice your own neck as soon as pick one up.”

“I want to,” she says doggedly. “I want to learn. I can learn.”

He chuckles again, then drives the knife into the bench with a single, swift thrust. It wedges three inches deep in the wood. “Run along home,” he says, “and mind your parents. Pick up a needle and thread if you want to play with sharp things.”

She considers, briefly, snatching his knife and running; she dismisses the idea not because she has any moral qualms about it, but because she knows a man in trousers can run faster than a girl in a skirt. Instead, she goes home and counts her pennies. From that point on, she saves money with a single-minded determination; no sweets, no ribbons, no toys. Her sisters fuss at her refusal to buy them baozi; she ignores them. After nearly six months of this, she finally has what she needs to buy her first knife (_bǐshǒu_, the Chinese shopkeeper calls it.) It’s still cheap, nothing like the fine ivory-handled ones she covets when she looks in the shop windows – but it will serve for now. She slices her fingers more times than she can count trying to learn how to spin and flip it, and her hands ache when she plunges them into lye in the laundry. At night, after the rest of the family are all in bed, she creeps out behind the building and practices flinging her knife into fence posts. After two years of practice, she’s halfway decent at it. She still doesn’t know how well she’d do at hitting a moving target, but she does manage to strike the fence post every time.

She turns twenty-one that year. Her English is accented, but clear. Her uncle dies, and her aunt takes over the running of the restaurant. They discover quickly that they still require a man’s protection, and her boy cousins are almost all too young. The one cousin who could help – Jiahao, her aunt’s oldest child – had run away years ago, off to join the railroad after an argument with his father. When her uncle dies, they send him a letter, and wait three months. There is no reply.

“Someone needs to bring him back,” Biyu’s mother tells her. “You’re the oldest. You speak English. It must be you.” And so, she pins her hair up with her old silver hairpin, sheathes her knife in her belt, and sets out to follow the Central Pacific Railroad.

She passes through a dozen camps in California, and finds Jiahao in none of them. Men shake their heads and avert their eyes when she stops to speak with them. The few who deign to reply have nothing to offer her. “Men come, men go,” one of them tells her. “No one follows.”

“I follow,” she replies, and moves on.

There is nothing for her in Nevada, so she keeps moving. In Utah Territory, things begin to look up. There are fewer Chinese men here, but the ones she finds are so grateful to see a fellow countrywoman, they are willing to stop and talk to her. Still, there is little for her to find. She has no picture of Jiahao, save one sketched by her aunt, and no one recognizes it when she pulls it out. “If he came alone,” one tells her, “then he did not survive long. We rely on each other.”

She sighs, pocketing the picture, and thanks the man before moving on again.

It’s in Brownsville that she finally finds her answers. She stops to speak with a man who identifies herself as Guo Kai, and he shakes his head sadly when she shows him the picture.

“His temper ran too hot,” he says. “He fought with the foreman, back in Parowan. Wanted better wages. Mr. Coughlin had him whipped, down to the bone, and the blood was inflamed. After that . . .”

She does not need to hear more; she has seen the results of blood poisoning, and she knows what her cousin’s final days must have looked like. “The wages he had,” she says, “what happened to them? Did he save any?” Even if she cannot bring Jiahao home, she can at least offer what remains of his earnings to her aunt.

“Mr. Coughlin took what remained,” Guo Kai tells her. “Drank it all down. I’m sorry.”

She fingers the knife in her belt, nodding. “And this Mr. Coughlin, where does he sleep?”

That night, after the lanterns have all been snuffed, she creeps into the bunkhouse where the foreman sleeps and cuts his throat in the night. There is precious little money in his rooms, but she takes what she can find, along with the bone-handled knife that sits on his dresser. She liberates his horse from the stables and rides it to Salt Creek, where she posts the money and a letter back home to San Francisco. Then she turns the horse around, riding towards Texas. With luck, she will have put Utah behind her by the time anyone connects the death of Mr. Coughlin to the Celestial woman who passed through his camp.

* * *

After those first few, desperate months, Goodnight turns to bounty hunting to make her way. It doesn’t pay much, but it keeps her clothed and fed. There are cattle rustlers in every territory south of Colorado, and men in every city looking for revenge on those who’ve wronged them. She passes through Colorado and into Utah Territory, and rounds up several stagecoach robbers before a more interesting assignment comes her way: a woman, name unknown, suspected of killing a foreman on the Central Pacific and stealing his horse. From what little Goodnight has seen of the railroad, she suspects the foreman rather deserved it – but a bounty is a bounty. Her quarry was last seen passing into New Mexico, on a steady southward trajectory. Goodnight saddles up her own horse and follows.

She stops to get her bearings in El Paso, ducking into a saloon to wet her whistle. She’s been sober too long, and memories of the battlefield are nipping at her heels. She’s curled up in a corner, nursing her third glass of rotgut, when a sudden hush falling over the room gives her cause to look up.

There’s a woman standing in front of the barkeep, one hand resting on her hip, the other spread across the bar. Goodnight can only see her in profile, but it’s enough to see that she’s young – of an age with Goodnight herself, she suspects, no more than thirty – and Chinese, her hair held off her face with a silver pin. Her gaze is inscrutable, one eyebrow quirked. “Beer, please.”

The barkeep stands there, open-mouthed. The one man seated at the bar is less thunderstruck, and drunk enough to be nasty. “We don’t serve ladies here,” he says. He draws out the syllables of _laaaaaaaaaadies_, to be sure no one in the room can mistake his meaning. “Aren’t you better suited to Madame Bellerose’s across the street? Although,” he adds, “you gotta _work_ for your drink there.” And he waggles his eyebrows in a manner probably intended to be lecherous but which ends up looking rather silly.

The woman turns to face him, and Goodnight draws in a sharp breath. This _is_ her quarry, no doubt about it – she has no picture to reference, but doesn’t need one to recognize the face of a woman who could cut a man down without hesitation or remorse. The drunk at the bar isn’t nearly so observant, grabbing at her arm without any sense of fear for his continued well-being. She removes herself carefully from his grasp, looking down her nose with a faint look of distaste. “Step back,” she says, “and I will do you no harm.”

He lets out a braying laugh, and grabs for her again – more roughly, this time. Goodnight could swear she sees the woman heave a sigh in the split second before chaos breaks out. The drunk man is screaming, his hand pinned against the bar with a knife, blood spurting wildly. Several other men leap to their feat, shouting; they may not be friends to the drunk, but allowing a stranger – a woman, a Celestial – to come in and make short work of him goes against what few morals they have. The woman seems unperturbed by all of this, cutting a quick path back the way she came and leaving the bar scarce minutes since she entered it. Goodnight slams back what’s left of her drink, staggers to her feet, and follows.

She’s lucky her mare knows her so well, for she’s in no fit state to direct her. Calliope snorts, tosses her head, and sets out after the bar woman’s horse at a canter. Her quarry is cantering too, but Calliope is a young and healthy horse, and she manages to catch up without too much effort.

“Wait. _Wait_.” Goodnight reaches out to grab at the other horse’s reins, before belatedly thinking that this might be a bad idea. The other woman gives her a sidelong, measuring look, but she slows her horse to a trot. “What do you want?”

“There’s a bounty on you,” Goodnight babbles, “out of Utah – they’re looking for you. They want your head. They sent me to get it.”

“I knew that.” Her quarry’s lip curls. “You were the best they cared to send?”

“I’m – I can – “ In truth, Goodnight can think of very little to say in her own defence; she looks like a wreck, and she knows it. “Aren’t you better off that way,” she says instead, “to be chased by someone not capable of bringing you in?”

“I would not be brought in by anybody.” The stranger shrugs. “You are no more a threat than anyone else.” And she nudges her horse back into a canter.

“Wait,” Goodnight says again. She’s got no idea what she’s going to say next, so the words that come out of her mouth come as a surprise to both of them. “I’ll go with you. Travel, I mean.”

The other woman laughs. Goodnight is startled by the sound – it’s somehow higher and clearer than she expected. “And what benefit would I find in that?”

“Security,” Goodnight says bluntly. “Folk’ll listen to me – respect me – quicker than they will you. Me being white and – and looking like a man and all.” She adds that last as an impulse. There are many who would take the revelation of her gender as a weapon to turn on her; this woman, she thinks, is not one of them.

She manages to startle with this, at least; the other woman’s eyes widen a fraction, and she looks Goodnight up and down. “You are drunk. A mess.”

“I am _now_,” Goodnight says. “Not always. Not when it matters. Tell me true, wouldn’t you rather avoid brawls when you can? I can do that for you. Run interference.” She thinks of saying, _protect you_, but catches herself. It would be pure insult to offer this woman protection; she would scorn it, and with good reason.

“I’m Goodnight,” she adds, “Goodnight Robicheaux.” She takes one hand off the reins, extending it for a handshake. “At your service.”

Her quarry – her partner, she hopes – gives her a lingering, searching look. Just when Goodnight begins to think her cause is hopeless, she catches her hand in a firm handshake. “My name is Biyu,” she says. “You can say it?”

Goodnight nods. “Biyu. Easy enough.”

Biyu laughs. “There are many whites who do not find it so.” She flicks the reins. “We had best be along, now. Those men will have eyes out for us. We can be in New Mexico by nightfall.”

Goodnight lets out a long, shaky breath. “Well, then. Lead on.”

* * *

They spend a month in New Mexico, before circling over to Arizona. There are no pursuers in their wake, and Goodnight lets herself relax. Biyu never seemed to worry about it in the first place, though when Goodnight suggests going on to California, she flatly shuts the idea down. She says very little about her past, beyond what Goodnight already knows: she killed that man in Utah, and has been scraping by on wild game since then. Her skirt is growing thin and worn, her blouse likewise, but she hardly seems to notice. The only things she takes any degree of care over are her horse and her belt full of knives. She takes the knives out to polish every night, rubbing them with a damp cloth until they gleam. It’s hypnotic, watching her. On their third week together, Goodnight blurts out, “how’s a woman like you learn to use knives like that?”

Biyu doesn’t raise her eyes from the knives. “How does a woman like you come to be traveling the country dressed as a man?”

“Oh . . .” Goodnight rolls her shoulders, considering. “Lack of anything else to do, I guess. No job, no husband, no family. Why not?”

“Why not, indeed.” Biyu places the last of her knives back in its sheath. “Why not knives?”

Goodnight looks sidelong at her. “Could be a woman might have other things on her mind. Family, say.”

Biyu’s look is inscrutable. “I have no husband, if that is what you mean.”

“Husband’s not the only family a woman can have.”

“No, it is not.” She starts to roll up her belt. “If you had family to return to, would you do it?”

“I . . .” Goodnight takes a moment to ponder this. “Depends, I guess. If they needed me. If I could do better by them at home than I could out here. If I . . . wanted to.”

Biyu lets out a snort at that last. “Doing things for the wanting is a gift.”

“Suppose it is.” Goodnight keeps on watching her as she packs the knife belt away and shakes out her bedroll. “Hey, seems to me I’m answering more of _your_ questions than you’re answering mine.”

“That is because you talk too much,” Biyu says. The words are biting, but her tone is mild. “And you do not listen as well as you should, especially to yourself. You have answered your own questions already.”

“The hell does that even . . .” Goodnight trails off with a sigh. “Fine, then. What’s next?”

“We have six dollars now,” Biyu says. “That will buy us a few more meals. Perhaps a bed as well, if you prefer that to sleeping on the ground.” There is a trace of the sardonic in her voice, as if she sees Goodnight as soft – fragile, even. Goodnight can’t think why. _She’s_ the one who spent four years sleeping on battlefields, after all.

“I can sleep wherever I need to,” she says, perhaps a little more forcefully than the situation calls for. Biyu raises her eyebrows. “I was thinking more of clothes, actually. Yours are looking awfully thin.”

Biyu shrugs. “There is no harm in thin clothes.”

“There will be when they start to rip,” Goodnight points out. “Or if we go northwards, into the cold weather - so you might as well buy yourself new ones while we’ve got the money. At least one of us can wear nice things.”

Biyu gives Goodnight a look that she wishes she could read; there’s something deep down in her eyes, but she can’t figure it. “You mean women’s clothes.”

Goodnight shrugs.

“You could wear them. If you chose.”

“Ah, hell . . .” Goodnight rubs the back of her neck with one hand. “I’ve been like this too long. Wouldn’t feel right, going back. And it’s easier.” Her own trousers won’t be wearing thin any time soon; they’re made from thick wool, designed for long hours on horseback. Goddamned hot, but durable. “You could pick up the habit, y’know. Easier than skirts.”

“I could,” Biyu says. “But, as you say, it would not feel right. We cannot be other than what we are.”

_You’re goddamn right about that_, Goodnight thinks. What she says aloud is, “Next town’s Wickenburg. Should be a tailor there.”

Biyu says nothing. Goodnight decides that she can count it as a victory.

* * *

“Gingham, right?”

Biyu shakes her head. “Canvas.”

The shopkeeper stares at her. “You want canvas for a skirt?”

“That is what I said.” She levels him with a cool stare. “Will it be a problem?”

His face flushes a dull red. “Listen here – “

Biyu is just resigning herself to another fight when she feels a hand on her elbow, Goodnight’s slow drawl next to her ear. “Any trouble, darlin’?” She smiles at the shopkeeper, bright and toothy. “We can pay, I assure you, sir.”

The man behind the counter is still flushed, but his scowl fades somewhat. “If that’s what you want. Sir.”

“It’s what the lady wants,” Goodnight says smoothly. She lays down several silver coins down on the counter. “That ought to cover it. Now, if you’ll excuse us . . .” And she steers Biyu away from the counter before anyone can comment further.

Biyu frowns at her. “I could have handled him.”

“You could have,” Goodnight agrees. She still hasn’t released her elbow, Biyu notices. “But then there would have been a fight and a terrible mess to clean up, and I’d prefer not to be run out of town before we’ve been here an hour.” She meets Biyu’s eyes. “I offered you security, remember?”

“I remember,” Biyu says grudgingly. “I thought you were offering to shoot people.”

Goodnight laughs. Biyu detects a tremor under the sound, and tucks that information away for further inspection. “Only when I can’t avoid it.”

Biyu says nothing to this, falling instead to silent contemplation. Goodnight talks a great deal, but more is said in her silences than in the words that come out of her mouth. She knows her traveling companion was a solider – she’s mentioned it briefly, eyes darting, changing the subject with great haste when it seemed as though Biyu might want to know more – and that she is proficient enough with a gun to carry one, although Biyu rarely sees her fire it. She only takes it out to hunt for their supper, and she usually manages to fell several rabbits with an economical number of bullets. She has no family, and no apparent ties that keep her in one place, though she has mentioned hailing from Tennessee. From that, Biyu has surmised that she must have fought for the Confederacy, though she has expressed no ill will towards the Union or disappointment over their victory. She is something of a puzzle.

Biyu has briefly considered posing a few blunt, well-chosen questions to Goodnight, but has demurred thus far. There is no real point to it, outside the satisfaction of idle curiosity. Besides, Goodnight has – for the most part – respected Biyu’s silence on her own history. She may not continue to do so, if Biyu begins to ask pointed questions.

By the end of the day, she has been outfitted with a new skirt – canvas, wide enough for her to ride astride – and a calico blouse. Goodnight pays for both, waving off the idea of buying anything for herself. “I’m suited well enough,” she says, making a show of brushing dirt from her trousers. “These should last me a good long while yet. What about hair things? Do you wear ribbons?”

Biyu politely refrains from laughing in her face at that, and turns down further offers of lace handkerchiefs and leather boots. Most, if not all of their money is Goodnight’s, and she has enough pride to turn away any offers that aren’t strictly necessary. The canvas skirt feels strangely stiff when she puts it on, but she soon learns to move with the fabric. And it _is_ more durable than the cotton she had before – she can already tell.

Goodnight keeps on hand tucked under Biyu’s elbow as they stroll down main street, offering a smile and a cheery wave to anyone who stops and stares. Biyu tucks her tongue behind her teeth to keep from smiling, and waits until there’s no one in earshot before saying, “You enjoy that, don’t you?”

“Enjoy what?” Goodnight’s eyes are wide and guileless, the picture of innocence. “I’m minding my manners, is all. My mama taught me that.”

“You are taunting them,” Biyu corrects her, but she lets herself smile a bit regardless. She does have some sympathy for Goodnight’s mischievous streak, even though she would be wary of indulging in such antics herself. This is the security Goodnight promised, she supposes – not firing at will, but being able to pass through the world without needing to keep one hand constantly on her weapon.

When she hears the _pop-pop-pop_ sound, she assumes at first that it’s firecrackers – she heard enough of them, growing up in Chinatown. But the other occupants of the street scream and scatter, and that’s when she realizes that the sound is coming from a gun. She spins around, hand going to her belt, eyes darting to find the source of the gunfire.

“Fight me, you cowards!” someone howls. Biyu narrows her eyes, following the sound until she locates the man teetering on the front porch of the saloon. One arm is raised up over his head, a pistol clutched in his sweaty hand. “Or won’t you stand behind your words? You bunch of chicken-hearted whoremongers – “

“Put the damn gun down, Ned,” one of the men in the street calls. He sounds aggravated, but not particularly alarmed. “No one’s in the mood for this.”

The first man, Ned, keeps waving the gun over his head, but no further shots are fired. Biyu relaxes. This man is a blatherskite, and most likely a drunk, but she has little to fear from him. The townspeople can handle him. She turns back the way she was originally walking, and it’s then that she realizes she has no idea where Goodnight’s gone.

“Goodnight?” she calls, casting her gaze around. No sign of her, which is somewhat concerning – she most likely wasn’t shot, but how can one woman go missing on a wide and open street? “Goody?” Her tongue trips a little over the syllables of the heretofore-unused nickname, hoping it’ll draw Goodnight out from wherever she’s gone. No such luck. 

She steps between the dry goods store and the hostler’s, and it’s there that she finds Goodnight. She’s pressed against the wall like a cornered cat, shaking and gasping while her eyes roll back in her head. For a moment, Biyu thinks she’s having a fit. Then she catches a string of muttered words, and realizes that Goodnight’s talking, rapid-fire syllables rolling off of her tongue. “Cannons coming, gonna rain down hell on our heads, God help us – “

“Goodnight.” Biyu touches her sleeve gently, and Goodnight flinches, looking up at her. “They’re coming.”

“No one is coming,” Biyu says. “It was only a drunkard with a gun.”

Goodnight’s head tips back until it hits the wall with a thud. “They’re coming,” she says again. “For me. Wings of death overhead – “

Biyu wraps a hand loosely around Goodnight’s wrist. “No. There is no one coming. Only me.”

Goodnight shudders. “I can hear it.”

“Come.” Biyu pulls Goodnight gently away from the wall, catching her around the waist as she stumbles. Her legs are shaking too badly to hold her up, and her face is white and sweat-drenched. She looks like someone in the grip of some terrible fever, delirious and terrified. Biyu steers her towards the boarding house, sending up a private prayer of thanks that she had gone ahead and gotten them rooms to sleep in. She doesn’t fancy the idea of riding out of town with Goodnight in this state.

A few people give them strange looks as she pulls Goodnight through the taproom and up the stairs; she ignores them. Once she’s managed to haul Goodnight up the stairs and into their room, she drops her onto the bed, where she curls into a ball. She’s still shaking. Biyu can see her shirt soaking through with sweat, and bends over her to pulls her suspenders free and her shirt loose from her trousers.

“’M going to be sick,” Goodnight mutters into the pillow. Biyu locates the chamber pot and kicks it over to Goodnight just in time. When she’s finished retching, she turns her face to the pillow again. She is no longer muttering, but Biyu can tell by the rapid pants issuing from her mouth that she is nowhere near sleep.

“Goodnight,” she says again. “No one is here. No one but us.”

“. . . soon,” Goodnight mutters, face still muffled in the bedclothes. Biyu sits beside her on the bed and awkwardly pats her shoulder, then runs her fingers through the short, bristly hairs at the nape of Goodnight’s neck. She has comforted her sisters and cousins often enough, when they wake themselves from the throes of a nightmare, but they were always easy enough to calm when they returned to their senses. Goodnight’s senses seem to have fled entirely, and Biyu is at a loss for how to regain them. The only thing she can think to do is knock Goodnight out and wait for her to sleep it off, and she doesn’t like her chances of landing a non-lethal blow to the head.

Unless . . .

She stands. “Wait here,” she says. Goodnight, still shivering, seems to take no notice. Biyu doubts she will move.

When Biyu returns from Wickenberg’s Chinese quarter, half an hour later, Goodnight is in the same position Biyu left her in. Her shaking is no longer so violent, but she is still breathing heavily. She does not look up when Biyu enters the room. Biyu sits on the bed once again, carefully rolling a piece of paper between her fingers, then holds it to Goodnight’s mouth. “Here. Take it.”

She waits until Goodnight has fitted her lips around the paper, then strikes a match and holds it up to the end. Goodnight’s eyes follow her as she does it. “Breathe in. Slowly.”

Goodnight blinks in confusion, but, puppy-like, does what she’s told. On the first inhale, she coughs, pushing herself up against the headboard of the bed. “Wha – what is this?”

“Slowly, I said.” Biyu takes the cigarette away, permits herself one shallow inhale, then passes it back to Goodnight. “Again. Hold it in your lungs.”

Once again, Goodnight breathes in. This time, her exhale is slow. The hectic colour of her cheeks has cooled somewhat, and when Biyu brushes her hair back, the sweat on her forehead is drying. She’s picked up the rhythm of it now: inhale, exhale. Smoke in, lingering in her lungs. Smoke out, a pale blue cloud in the air. Her head falls back against the wall with a thump. Her voice, when she speaks, is slurred with incoming sleep. “Wha’s this?”

“Opium.” Biyu takes the cigarette and inhales the last few tendrils of smoke. “It soothes the troubled mind, allows for a measure of peace. Sleep now.”

“. . . think I might,” Goodnight says slowly. Her eyes are heavy-lidded, languor following the rush of panic and the numbing effects of the drug. She slides back down the wall, head hitting the pillow as her eyes close. One of her fists is still bunched, white-knuckled, in the sheets; Biyu untangles it.

She looks down at Goodnight, considering. She had not realized how much _space_ Goodnight takes up – until, suddenly, she didn’t. She is not a large woman, but her bravado and her swagger somehow make her seem bigger and brighter – when she chooses it, at least. Biyu has also seen her hide away, like she did in the saloon in Texas, but she had ascribed that to simple drunkenness, a weakness of will and a desire to indulge. This sort of wild-eyed, mindless terror is something she has not encountered before.

The opium soothed it, at least. She has faith that it will do so again, if circumstances call for it. Until then, all that she may do is stand by and wait.

The sun was beginning to fall when she left for the Chinese quarters, and the view from her window is close to dark now. Biyu shucks off her new blouse and skirt without ceremony, and crawls in to sleep beside Goodnight. Tomorrow, she thinks, they will move on. Two days in Wickenberg has proved more than enough for both of them.

* * *

“We’ll need more money soon.”

Goodnight glances up from where she’s tending the fire. “Will we?”

“We had six dollars before all . . . this.” Biyu gestures to indicate her clothes, without looking up from the knife she’s polishing. Goodnight wonders sometimes how she hasn’t worn the damn things down to nubs. “Three dollars will serve us well enough for now, if we remain in the wilderness, but we will run through it quickly if we go to into town again. I would prefer to have some surety against disaster.”

“What disaster would you be anticipating?” Goodnight asks. She pokes the fire with twigs, sending up a plume of sparks. “Medical? I’ll promise you now, if I fall off the horse and break a leg, you can just put me down with a bullet then and there.”

She punctuates the statement with a chuckle, but Biyu does not join her, and she lets the laugh trail off awkwardly. “’Course, if _you_ break a leg and want to keep breathing for awhile yet, I’d be happy enough to find a sawbones for you. Can’t guarantee good service on behalf of any of these frontier doctors, though.”

“I was not thinking of medical expenses.” Biyu finally looks up from her knife. “I would rather know that we had money to fall back on if we came upon a lean season. That’s all.”

“Well, then . . .” Goodnight sits back, rolling her shoulders. “I’d offer to go back to bounty hunting, but I doubt anyone would hire me on after I didn’t bring you in. Hell, the people who hired me on probably think you killed me. It’d raise all sorts of uncomfortable questions if I were to turn back up in their office.”

“It would be inadvisable,” Biyu agrees. She lays the knife out on a cloth before her and takes out another. “I was thinking, perhaps, that one or both of us might have other trades we could ply. We are both proficient with weapons, in our own way.”

“That we are,” Goodnight says, a little uneasily. If Biyu is about to suggest trick shooting as a career, they’re in for an awkward conversation. Goodnight’s never offered up an explanation for the spell she took in Wickenberg – just woke up the next morning and offered an awkward thanks to Biyu for not fleeing the city without her, to which Biyu had appeared vaguely offended. If Biyu does think they should try to earn their living by Goodnight’s gun, she – well, she’ll simply have to be honest about why it won’t work. She owes Biyu that much, at this point.

“There are many circuses in San Francisco,” Biyu says, offhandedly. “I saw a fair share of them when I was young.” This catches and holds Goodnight’s attention: it’s the most Biyu has ever said about her past in one go. “I often saw performers who worked with knives. The crowds seemed to appreciate it.”

“Are you suggesting a William Tell act?” When Biyu looks confused, Goodnight shakes her head; she’d forgotten that the Chinese must have other words for the stories Goodnight had grown up with. “Knife-throwing, I mean. Showing off your skills at hitting a target. Or not hitting a target, as the case may be.” She rather hopes not; knives inspire less fear in her than guns, but she still doesn’t fancy posing with an apple on her head. She doesn’t trust _anyone_ that much.

“I thought perhaps . . . knife_ fighting_.” Biyu lays a third knife besides the two already sitting in front of her. “A demonstration of skill, against whichever opponent would be willing to bet against me. Winner takes all.”

Goodnight blinks. “And . . . you would win?”

Biyu gives her a scornful look. “Obviously.”

All right, she walked right into that one. “If you’re sure,” she says. “If you want to. But you’d definitely need me to run interference, if you did. Women wouldn’t volunteer to fight you, and men wouldn’t pay you.”

Biyu nods. “You would be my . . . security. As you offered.”

“Your manager?” Goodnight says, a touch hopefully. Biyu does not laugh at her outright, which is reassuring at least.

“My . . . business partner.” She reaches a hand across the fire. “Profits split sixty-fourty. Deal?”

That sounds more than fair to Goodnight. “Deal.”

* * *

Despite her outward confidence, Goodnight finds herself more than a little anxious as they approach Biyu’s first fight. She doesn’t doubt Biyu’s skill, but she _does_ doubt the honour of the white man fighting against her, and of the sniggering men in the crowd. Most have come expecting a freak show, or a sanctioned opportunity to watch a man beat a woman; what they’ll do when their expectations are disappointed, Goodnight isn’t sure. She touches the gun at her waist, just to be sure, though she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to gather the courage to fire it.

She needn’t have worried, as it turns out: the fight goes to first blood, and it’s over in minutes. Biyu parries her opponent’s attack easily, then slices a line down his arm. He hollers, blood already staining his white shirt red, and Biyu smiles as she wipes her blade clean on her skirt. Goodnight sighs to herself, part relief, part exasperation. So much for nice clothes.

“A dollar, if you please,” she says as she circles among the onlookers, hat in her hand. Most are impressed enough to hand it over without fussing, though some curse at her and Biyu both. When she reaches the last man on the line, he pauses with his hand halfway to his pocket, and she tenses in anticipation.

But instead: “Goodnight Robicheaux?” He squints at her, and she feels the blood begin to drain from her face. “That’s your name, ain’t it? Saw it in the papers. Saw your likeness, too.”

“You’re mistaken –“ she starts to say, faintly, but he doesn’t hear her; he’s already shouting to his friends. “Hey, fellas! I told ya we had a prize sharpshooter outta Tennessee and you said it was a tall tale, but I got him_ here_.” He throws an arm around Goodnight’s shoulders and starts to propel her forward, though she squirms to get away. “Took down a hundred Yankees, easy –“

“Excuse me.”

Goodnight breathes a silent sigh of relief as Biyu appears at her elbow. Her face is customarily poker-stiff; Goodnight doesn’t know how much of the conversation she’s overheard. “I would like my earnings now, please.”

“Earnings?” The man drops his arm from Goodnight’s shoulder, frowning. “You _pay_ her?”

“You paid to watch her,” Goodnight says, as smoothly as she can under the circumstances. She takes a step back. “It does follow rather naturally that she would receive a portion of the profits, no?”

The man’s face is still a cloud of puzzlement. Then something appears to click into place within his head; he beams, a thick, stupid expression. “Oh,” he says. “_Ohh_, I get it. You fuckin’ her too?”

“I –“

“No skin off my nose,” he continues. “Man’s got a right to find his pleasures. Say, do yellow gals fuck different? I hear their cunts –“

Goodnight is no longer any use in battle; if she were facing a gun, there would be nothing for her to do but listen to his talk with her teeth gritted. But she still has full use of both her fists and her knees, and it’s the latter she slams up into the man’s stomach just before driving the heel of her palm into his nose. He howls, stumbling backwards as blood streams down his face. Goodnight steps back again, glancing at Biyu. Her expression hasn’t changed. Goodnight has no idea what she’s thinking.

“Shall we?” Goodnight says to her. The man she hit is still doubled over, and his friends just look dumbfounded. Goodnight offers her arm to Biyu, who accepts, and they walk quickly away from the scene of both their fights. Best not to linger when the man recovers enough to hit back.

Their boarding house is across town, far enough that none of their audience are seated in the taproom. They don’t bother stopping there anyhow, instead bypassing dinner and a drink for the quiet and safety of their room. Goodnight collapses on the bed, examining her knuckles. They’re already starting to bruise. “Figures,” she mutters. “I’m out of practice.”

Biyu unrolls her knife belt, placing it across the chest at the foot of the bed before she turns to Goodnight. “That was not necessary.”

“_Really_.” Goodnight raises an eyebrow. “You about to warn me against starting fights? Seems to me that between the two of us, you’ve –“ Her mouth snaps shut. She’d been about to say, _you’ve got more blood on your hands_, but of course that’s not true. And Biyu knows it, now.

“I have no objections to fighting,” Biyu says. She crosses the room, looking out the window. “But it was not necessary. Not then.”

“On the contrary, it was _entirely_ necessary.” Goodnight kicks her boots off. “If I’m to be a counterfeit man, it behooves me to behave as a gentleman ought. Defending my lady’s honour is not the least of my duties.”

Biyu turns around, eyebrows raises. It takes Goodnight a second to realize why. “Your lady?”

“Well –“ Curse it, she can feel her face heating up. “A lady under my protection, at least.”

Biyu nods, apparently deeming this an acceptable answer. “He knew you.”

“Knew my picture.” Divested of her boots, Goodnight sits back against the headboard of the bed. This isn’t a conversation she’d ever wanted to have, but she supposes that idiot outside’s forced her hand now. “From the papers. The war.”

“Hmm,” is all Biyu says in reply. Once again, her face is expressionless – but no, not quite. It’s taken awhile, but Goodnight’s learned to read the small quirks in the shape of her mouth, the narrowing of her eyes. She wants to know more, but she won’t say so. That’s up to Goodnight. And she could hold back, if she wanted – Biyu won’t push the issue – but damn it, it’s all coming out sooner or later.

“I was a sharpshooter,” she said. “Out of Tennessee, like he said. Eleventh battalion. I wasn’t much use as a soldier fighting hand to hand, but shooting long-distance . . .” Her hand drifts to her hip, though she’d shucked off her gunbelt and tossed it aside as soon as they came upstairs. “I was good at that. I was the _best_. Got myself a reputation, I guess.”

She laughs, a cracked and shaky sound. Biyu is still watching her silently. “They kept a tally,” she continues, “my superiors did. Of how many I shot down. I never wanted to know, but I had to. Had to know how much was on my conscience, what St. Peter’s going to hold me to account for when I come up on the pearly gates. A hundred and twenty-_eight_. Nice, even number.” Her throat feels dry. She wishes for whiskey, but she’d have to shift herself and go downstairs for that, and she doesn’t know that she has it in her to move.

“You know what they called me?” She laughs again. “Called me Angel of Death in the army, but back home, my mama named me Angélique. Her little angel. And then there were soldiers hoisting me up on their shoulders with that damned name, and I couldn’t even let them in on the joke.”

Biyu nods slowly. “And so, you changed your name.”

“I already changed my name,” Goodnight counters. “Soon as I went into the army. But I . . .” She passes a hand over her eyes, trying to surreptitiously swipe away unwelcome tears. “Yeah, I guess that’s why I kept it. I’m no angel. Don’t want to be, anyhow.”

She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to wait out the rush of tears. The bed creaks beside her, and she cracks one eye open to see Biyu sitting on the mattress. She holds out a rolled cigarette, and Goodnight takes it gladly. Just the heavy scent of the opium paste has already become a comfort to her. She brings the cigarette to her lips and inhales deeply, waiting for the lethargy to sink into her bones. She’s fairly certain at this point that Biyu won’t speak – she rarely does, after all – so it nearly startles her into a renewed state of sobriety when Biyu opens her mouth and begins to talk.

“We saw no battles in San Francisco,” she says. “Not in Chinatown, at any rate. But we saw their aftermath.” She meets Goodnight’s eyes, and Goodnight is startled at the depth of feeling she sees. “Men came home without arms, without legs, without eyes. They sat outside the saloons and cursed the world until the drink took them.” She touches Goodnight’s arm lightly. “You have done better than many.”

“_Have_ I, now?” Goodnight snorts around the cigarette. “You’ve seen me put away a bottle of bourbon before. More than once, as I recall.”

“And I have seen you get up and walk the next day, in spite of that.” Biyu’s hand remains where she placed it – not an insistent gesture, but a reassuring one. “There are many who could not say the same. Many who died on the battlefields, but did not realize it for months afterwards. You are still alive.”

“In the most technical sense of the word, sure.” Goodnight sucks on the cigarette like she’s trying to eat the damn thing whole. “Can’t say as I’m – well.” Biyu’s gaze is still on her, penetrating. It makes Goodnight want to squirm. “There are better men than me who died out there. Lots of them. Men who had families – I saw ‘em carrying around little tintypes, wanting to get home to their wives and children. So why spare me, huh?” Words are bubbling up past her lips faster than she can staunch them. “The war chewed me up and spit me out, and now I’m no good for a single damn thing, so why God saw fit to save one useless specimen of humanity and damn the rest to hell, I surely don’t know.”

She realizes two things belatedly: one, Biyu probably has no use for the God Goodnight prays to (or used to pray to) and two, Biyu has studiously avoided any conversation regarding her own family, which means that she may well still have one. Probably a sore spot, if she does. Probably not the kind of thing she appreciates Goodnight bringing up in a self-pitying stupor. She drops her chin to her chest. “Hell,” she mutters, “doesn’t make much difference neitherway. Not like I was ever consulted in the matter.”

She doesn’t dare look up; she hardly trusts herself to speak. Biyu says nothing either. So there they sit, surrounded by clouds of pungent smoke, neither one speaking a word. They sit until Goodnight feels her eyelids start to droop, the drug circulating through her blood and slowing her faculties until she’s as good as asleep.

“I have a family,” Biyu says. Goodnight jerks to attention. She can’t decide if she’s more shocked to hear Biyu renewing the conversation, or by the fact that she’s elucidating on her past. “A large one. When I first left them, I did so with a purpose. When that was done, I was . . . lonely. At loose ends.” Her hand slides from Goodnight’s arm to the back of her neck. Goodnight freezes. “But it has been several years since, and I think that I would not return now. I am not who I once was. Neither are you.”

“’M still a killer,” Goodnight mumbles into her chest. “Time doesn’t wash that off.”

“I have killed,” Biyu says. “You know this. And the men you fought with, the ones who died – they killed too. Perhaps they would have killed more, had they survived the war. Perhaps they would have gone to seed. You cannot know. Who could?” The hand on Goodnight’s neck squeezes firmly. “All we have is now. What good is questioning our own fortunes, when we know we cannot change them?”

“Plenty good,” Goodnight says, “if I don’t deserve it.”

Biyu’s fingers are tangled in Goodnight’s hair. It’s getting increasingly difficult for Goodnight to follow the conversation. “I do not agree,” she says. “So we will call it a draw.” Goodnight glances up. Biyu’s lips are tilted in a crooked smile. “Can we win a bet on that, do you think?”

And perhaps it’s the opium, or the exhaustion of the day catching up to her, or even the rare and precious quality of Biyu’s smile, but Goodnight can’t help it. She starts to laugh. Beside her, she can feel Biyu vibrating with laughter as well, and when Goodnight curls towards her, she does not pull away. Nor does she remove her hand.

* * *

Goodnight doesn’t kiss her that night. She could have done it, she thinks – if she’d been brave enough, or sober enough, or both. Maybe she just hadn’t wanted to disturb the fragile peace that settled on her then, lying side-to-side with Biyu, closer than she’d been to any warm body since the war ended.

She’d talked instead – about the cabin in Cumberland Gap, about the great horned owl whose appearance had presaged her father’s death and will doubtless return for her one day, the scraps of French her mama had passed on to her (“_Ferme tes yeux, mon ange_,” she’d sung as she put her daughter to bed at night, a memory Goodnight can no longer call up without wincing) about the long marches across the South that the army had taken her on. About the itch of her gray uniform, about the coarse jesting of her fellow soldiers that had made her blush before she got used to it. About the Union soldier who had once pulled her out of a pool of thick mud, shaken her until she spat the dirt out and started breathing again, and said nothing of the colour of her coat. A righteous man; probably the only one she’d met in all her years at war. The whole experience hadn’t done much for her faith in her fellow man.

Biyu spoke then, too. Not as much – hard for her to get a word in edgewise, with Goodnight keeping up a steady flow of words until their candle burned down to the wick. But she’d said enough. She’d talked about a childhood in Chinatown in San Francisco, about the bustle and babble all around her, the eye of her own private hurricane. How she’d taught herself up to use her beloved knives, how they felt when she weighed them in her hand. About the railroad man she’d killed, without reservations or regret. He had deserved death; it was as simple as that. Goodnight envied her her assurance.

She could have kissed her then, but she didn’t. She doesn’t for weeks afterwards, though they travel on together and sleep side-by-side in boarding houses with only one bedroom to offer. Their money accumulates quickly, as word spreads of Biyu’s prowess and more and more people want to see the mysterious knife woman for themselves. They have money enough to spare, but they don’t spend it in excess. Biyu is too cautious for that, waiting for the day when their purses run dry, and Goodnight follows her lead.

(“You could at least buy a handkerchief,” she complains to Biyu, “instead of wiping the blood off on your _skirt_.”

Biyu only raises an eyebrow at her. “Skirts wash,” she says, and that’s the end of that.)

In the end, it’s not Goodnight who plucks up enough courage to kiss Biyu; it’s Biyu who initiates it. Goodnight supposes that makes sense. Biyu might be cautious, but she’s also the braver of the two by far. Of course she’d be the one to set out in pursuit of what she wants, and damn what consequences may arise. It’s another piece of her puzzle that Goodnight can’t quite figure – how she looks at a situation, assesses whatever dangers it may pose, then proceeds to throw herself headlong into the fight. Goodnight understands foolhardiness – hell, she’s been a prime example of it in days past. She doesn’t understand this calculated choice to seek out danger.

Regardless, it’s what Biyu does. It’s late at night, after the day’s fighting and betting is done, and they’re sitting in the taproom enjoying the fruits of their labour. Roast veal and vegetable soup, washed down with a dram of Tennessee whiskey that makes Goodnight feel vaguely homesick. Goodnight’s holding forth to the room about Biyu’s skill with knives, how she once saw her take down five – no, ten – no, _twenty_! – men in the space of mere seconds, all smooth movements and deadly grace. Their audience listens appreciatively for awhile, then start to drift away, and it’s then that Biyu rolls her eyes and gets up from the table. “Time for bed.”

“’M having fun,” Goodnight protests, but she still lets Biyu pull her away. She fancies she sees a few looks of relief on the faces of the other bar patrons and concedes to herself that it’s probably best that they don’t wear out their welcome.

When they make it up to their room, Biyu pushes Goodnight in before she locks the door behind them. When she turns back towards Goodnight, she has one eyebrow raised. “Twenty men?”

“Well.” Goodnight sits down heavily on the bed. “There were twenty men in the saloon, anyhow.”

“Fifteen. At most.” Biyu takes a step closer, until she’s standing in the space between Goodnight’s knees, skirts brushing against Goodnight’s inner thighs. She leans down, putting a hand on the back of Goodnight’s neck – a familiar gesture by now, Goodnight’s pulse jumping under Biyu’s touch – and gives her one of her usual inscrutable looks.

“If you’ve got a question,” Goodnight says, “you can ask.” She should hope that she’s demonstrated her own volubility enough that Biyu no longer needs to worry about needful information being held back. God knows that – apart from one major exception – she’s no good at concealment.

Biyu says nothing. Instead, she leans down until their mouths brush against each other, light and chaste at first, but then deeper once Goodnight fails to pull back or make her objections known. Biyu’s tongue presses against Goodnight’s closed lips, and Goodnight opens her mouth automatically, letting Biyu explore the contours of her teeth and tongue. She puts up a hand of her own, placing it on Biyu’s neck, a mirror of her position, and tries to pull her in closer.

Biyu won’t let her, though: she pulls back instead, though Goodnight tries to follow her mouth with a faint whine. She’s smiling, cheeks pink. “You have no objection, then?”

“God damn,” Goodnight says, unsettled and irritable from having the kiss broken, “I’d’a done it myself if you hadn’t beat me to it – “ She isn’t given the chance to say more, as Biyu pulls her in for another kiss, this one deeper and more urgent than the last. Goodnight abandons Biyu’s neck and wraps both arms around her waist instead, pulling backwards until they’re sprawled across the limited expanse of their bed. She fumbles at Biyu’s skirt, but it’s been years since she wore one herself, and the intricacies of the fastenings and buttons have since escaped her. Her blouse, at least, is a little easier to remove, and Goodnight makes short work of it. Biyu pulls back again, smirking, and murmurs, “You no longer fear to tear it . . . ?”

Goodnight growls, pulling her back. Her own shirt comes off easily, though it’s more of a challenge to untuck and discard the rags she uses to keep her chest bound flat. Biyu pauses when they finally come off, running her fingers over the red marks embedded into Goodnight’s skin and bending to run her tongue over them. Goodnight groans. It’s been so damn long since anyone actually _saw_ her, and now Biyu is stripping her down to her bare skin, exposing parts she’s done her best to hide from the world and spoiling them with attention. It’s almost too much to bear.

It’s Goodnight who pulls back this time. “Roll over,” she murmurs. Biyu gives her a questioning look, and Goodnight chuckles. “I know what I’m about, I promise. Trust me.”

Biyu rolls off of Goodnight, lying on her back in the rumpled ruins of their bedclothes. At this angle, it’s easier for Goodnight to see what she’s doing as she undoes the clasps holding her skirts and petticoats up and pull the whole mess of fabric out of the way. That done, she runs her hands up and down the insides of Biyu’s thighs, listening for the changes in her breathing as she finds sensitive spots and presses down on them. She bends to kiss the jutting bones of her hip, the inside of her knee, the join of her leg, and finally bends to mouth at her sex.

Biyu hisses above her, thighs tightening around Goodnight’s ears. Goodnight just laughs, kissing her again and adding the pressure of her fingers in places she knows will send fire sparking along Biyu’s nerves. Biyu kicks at her back, growling, but Goodnight just keeps at what she’s doing. Steady’s the best way to go about it, she remembers, so she continues on as she started, and soon enough, Biyu’s reaching down to yank at her hair, thighs trembling, thrusting against Goodnight’s mouth as she comes. Goodnight stays where she is, still moving her tongue, until Biyu sighs and pushes at her head to signal that she’s had enough. She sits up, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand.

Biyu just looks at her, chest still heaving, cheeks now bright red. “You did know what you were doing.”

“Did you doubt me?” Goodnight spreads her hands, mock-offended. “I never lie.”

Biyu laughs, pulling her up for a kiss. Once she has Goodnight in place, she reaches into her trousers, probing fingers sliding across the surface of Goodnight’s skin. Goodnight huffs a breath into Biyu’s mouth, squirming for more. Once Biyu has her hand in place, all Goodnight really needs to do is rock against her fingers, groaning against the hollow of Biyu’s throat until something snaps inside her and she comes in a hot rush.

When the aftershocks are through, she rolls off of Biyu to lie on the bed beside her. Biyu props herself up on one elbow, a thoughtful expression on her face. “So,” she says, “how is it that you learned to do that?”

“Told you,” Goodnight mutters, eyelids drooping, “soldiers talk. Most of it bluster, but I picked up a few things here and there.” She’d had no outlet for practical use of her new skills, of course, but it had been enough to know. It _has_ been enough.

“Hmph.” Biyu moves closer, flipping over onto her stomach and slinging one arm over Goodnight’s waist. “If you say so.”

“I _do_ say so.” Goodnight tucks her head against Biyu’s shoulder, breathing in the light fragrance of her skin and hair. “I said it before, I never lie.”

Biyu just snorts. “Go to sleep.”

* * *

“Where to next?” Goodnight says the next morning as they saddle up. Biyu herself would gladly stay put for another week at least, but she knows it’s not wise. There’s money to be made, after all, and they can’t risk resting on their laurels. Besides, neither of them are made to settle in one place.

“I think . . .” Biyu considers the question, absently chewing a piece of grass that she holds between her teeth. No cigarette today. They hadn’t needed one yesterday, either: Goodnight had slept the whole night through, free of nightmares or sudden spurts of panic. That may signify something, Biyu thinks. They’ll have to wait and see. “Louisiana. For a change of pace.” She’s never been there, but she’s heard tell: grand old cities, a multitude of languages filling the streets, and heavy, wet heat that coats everything in sight. A change of pace indeed, from the dry, burning sun of Arizona.

Goodnight nods, swinging herself up into the saddle. “My mama used to tell me we had family out that way. Came over from France, way back when.”

“We all came from somewhere,” Biyu says, mounting her own horse. The bay mare nickers softly, twitching her ears back, ready to pick up commands from her rider. She pauses. “Would you ever wish to return to Tennessee?”

“I might . . .” Goodnight pauses herself for a long minute before shaking her head. “No. Not now. Too much water under the bridge for that.”

Biyu nods. “Louisiana, then.” Their horses step close enough together that Biyu can reach over and brush a hand across Goodnight’s cheek, tucking away a stray lock of hair. Goodnight catches her gaze, grinning. “Louisiana,” she echoes. “Onward we go.”


End file.
